Artist Dia Bhupal tells us all about the first edition of the Yinchuan Biennale

An Indian artist deciphers words from a Palestinian novelist in a city in China

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4 days in YinchuanThe first edition of the Yinchuan Biennale in China, curated by Bose Krishnamachari, was an inspiring experience of artists and curators from all over the world. His vision was not so simple; he wanted to create a discourse on conflicts that the world is currently confronted with and perhaps make possible propositions through a global creative confluence. This led to an interesting dialogue between basic and complex works of artists. ‘For an Image, Faster Than Light’ was the theme for this edition—it was translated into an ionic examination in eternities that contemporary artists are engaging in to find answers to various questions. Exhibits and artists contextualised some of most important issues confronting the world—be it scientific and spiritual, or psychic and philosophical, and even the catastrophic and celebratory. Artists confronted the vitiated social, political, economic and physical environment, which, of course, is in permanent flux, where the beginning merges with the end.

I spent four days in the city of Yinchuan, installing my work, attending the preview and being part of the artist symposium titled ‘Gate of the Sun Between the Mountain and the River’. The title references the seminal novel of Palestinian writer Elias Khoury. According to Krishnamachari, the concept suggests the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. It builds a myth out of an accumulation of individual voices, which is what we attempted to achieve through this coming together of artists and artwork from across the world with different voices, perspectives and standpoints.

Constructing ImagesI exhibited images from my series of work titled ‘Mind the Gap’. My images reflect the contemporary state of photography—the liminal possibility of introspection and hidden structures of meaning in the mundane. As an artist I work with the ‘constructed image’ primarily in public spaces, cornering my viewers into a contemplative state to observe, reflect and experience the basic realities. Although people are figuratively absent, what remains are images that become models of the memory of these moments. In a world saturated with manipulated and mediated images, my work re-evaluates the potential of the photographic medium. The images do not simply depict the world around us but actively participate in its construction.

In The DetailsMy work is mostly centred on my interest in private experiences in everyday public space. It’s not space alone that interests me, but certain kinds of space which reflects a perceptual gap between how we see our lives and how we live them. All my images are repurposed and created from wasted paper, magazines, newspapers, old cardboard boxes etc. The process of my work is calming and meditative. Each colour is found in a trashed magazine and cut into a strip and twirled, and then the roll is crafted to created a structure. Each structure comes with its own text and together they create a myriad of stories from different cultures, time periods and genres creating a unique environment—a parallel to the randomness of individuals experiencing public spaces. Much like various artists from across the world coming together in the city of Yinchuan in China.

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